The world is today a “world of cities”.
In this world there is phenomenon that is an incessant phenomenon, that occurs at an
increasing speed: the urban explosion, that is sprawl, ma not only sprawl.
To cope with this phenomenon is not easy, mainly because it is not a single phenomenon, but a
set of related phenomena, different for morphology and different in causes. Then there is not a sole solution to control the urban explosion, as it is told by the rather
simplistic mantra of the compact city.
The control of the urban explosion needs to increase density and concentrate urbanization, but
we can operate this control only if we understand the diversity of phenomena to identify the right
treatment, designing with far-sightedness,
How to design and plan a new way to allow a development of these territories, looking at the
interaction between the different levels of governance, the different functions, the different
populations?
Uno starting point could be that it is possible to reduce the negative effects of suburbanization,
maintaining the advantages, finding a “compromise” when needed; it implies to combine
planning regulations with fiscal end economical measures.
Urban and territorial planning cannot govern the sub-urbanisation by itself: we have a complex
game with a lot of diverging actors; we must integrate planning and fiscal systems.
We’ll try to say how.